Category: IT Management

Circa 1988. I entered the technology space, writing SAS/JCL on an IBM 3270 for the Federal Government. There was something missing though. Countless merges, duplicate data filtering and large data sets all seemed like a horrible waste of resources and, more importantly, time. Not only that, SAS user guides filled my entire cubicle, making it nearly impossible to evolve the skill set quickly.

As the modern database continues to grow, its inherent feature set expands alongside it. More solutions allow remote DBAs and internal teams alike to solve business problems tied to cutting costs and improving efficiencies. However, with these solutions comes increased complexity surrounding database administration, and it falls on the shoulders of DBAs to understand and leverage the industry’s evolving technologies.

Designing, building and maintaining highly available (HA) architectures is the key to providing end users with 24×7 access to mission-critical applications. From the financial services sector to higher education, organizations require their databases be online and readily accessible. When these critical applications become unresponsive or performance is hindered, the resulting downtime can have extreme consequences. With the potential for legal penalties, bad press, loss of customer goodwill and other repercussions looming, DBAs must constantly focus on ensuring their systems are highly available, quickly recoverable and protected from natural or human-induced disasters.

As the strategic role of databases continues to advance within organizations, the task of finding and retaining experienced DBAs has become increasingly difficult. DBAs are seen as the “Go-To” specialist for internal IT teams due to their knowledge across a wide spectrum of information technology and processes. In an increasingly complex environment, database administrators design, support, and safeguard a company’s critical data stores, ultimately allowing organizations to make better business decisions.

After years of having their own internal processes, technology, and best practices, it’s understandable some organizations have trepidation when it comes to DBA outsourcing. Especially for companies with internal teams, concerns arise regarding how external support will fit in with their current DBAs and the methods in which they operate. At RDX, our customer on-boarding process is focused on easing these concerns and building a solid foundation to provide a high level of remote database services based around the needs and challenges of your infrastructure.

IT professionals can attest – the world in which we operate changes rapidly. For database administrators, it can be a blessing and a curse all at once. With technology continually advancing, database vendors are forced to implement new features and functionalities in order to stay competitive. Each release contains dozens of advancements and new additions that can potentially be leveraged to improve the database environments they manage. Part of what makes being a DBA so rewarding is the ability to evaluate and understand these inherent features, choosing to implement those that pose the greatest benefit to each application.

It’s late, you’re tired, and all you want is your head to hit the pillow – all DBAs know the feeling. It was a long day to begin with, and just as you drifted off to sleep, your cell phone rings. All of a sudden you need to log back into your datacenter and troubleshoot a critical database that became unresponsive.End users need access to this data before they sit down at their desk in the morning – so sleep isn’t an option.

Any business can attest to how important their data is to the functions of their company; without it, everything comes to a halt. But what is sometimes overlooked are the individuals tasked with administering that data and its surrounding environments. In the worst of cases, a business experiences a catastrophic event, like a corrupted server, and slips into panic-mode as no one at the company knows how to correct the issue – or, the sole individual in charge of your databases can’t be reached. Businesses know they can’t afford to have this happen, but:

Despite the proliferation of cloud services, virtualization technologies and cutting-edge hardware, maintaining business continuity in the event of a disaster – natural or man-made – is still a complex series of processes and procedures. In fact, the complications in modern enterprise IT – the lack of integration, shadow IT, bandwidth limits, legacy systems and so on – are making disaster recovery an incredibly difficult practice. To guarantee success nowadays, businesses must employ multiple methods and cover every base.